Category: Long-term care

Coronavirus: It will be challenging for many older adults to vote
It seems inconceivable in the year 2020 that everyone in this country eligible to vote should not be able to do so easily. With technology as sophisticated as it is, voting should be a simple protected click of a button. Instead, barriers to voting for large portions of the population remain huge; Kaiser Health News reports that many older adults living in nursing and other living facilities may not be able to vote this November.

The novel coronavirus is keeping family members from visiting with their loved ones in nursing homes and other group home settings. That will make it harder for older adults to vote. Family members are often responsible for helping their older loved ones complete voting ballots. Moreover, COVID-19 will also keep group homes from establishing on-site voting precincts.

In some group homes, volunteers are assisting residents with voting by mail. But, this is not standard. And, it is generally not required. So, it seems more than likely that a smaller portion of older adults will vote in the upcoming election.

States can step in to require facilities to help older residents with voting. California’s Department of Public Health is telling facilities housing older adults that they must help their residents with voting. But, a lot of these facilities are short-staffed. And, even when there are staff, the staff might worry about being seen as influencing residents’ votes. Moreover, some states only permit bipartisan assistance teams to help people to vote.

Typically, more than 70 percent of older adults vote, as compared with less than half of young people between 18 and 29 years. old. Usually, there also are lots of voluntary organizations that assist older people with voting. In addition, candidates typically campaign at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. But, not during this pandemic.

In the past, congregate living facilities would either have voting booths on site or bus their members to a voting site. This time round, older adults might need to request an absentee ballot in order to vote.

If you or someone you love is not getting needed assistance to vote, contact the state’s long-term care ombudsman. Every state has one. The ombudsman provides free help and can work with the state’s Department of Public Health to see what help is available.

Here’s more from Just Care:
October 12, 2020
Coronavirus: Strike teams step in to help nursing home residents and staff
Nursing homes and other residential facilities have been hard hit by the novel coronavirus, with residents and staff easily representing 40 percent of lives lost in the US. What do you do when there’s a natural disaster of this sort? The New York Times reports that some counties are sending in strike teams–medical workers and other emergency responders–to help nursing homes and other residential care centers and provide aid to residents.

Strike teams are usually made up of eight to 10 people from local health departments, private businesses, nonprofits and emergency response agencies. They bring their expertise and assistance to the nursing home disaster at the request of a facility. For example, county nurses and doctors may be called upon to step in for nursing home staff who become sick. They might test staff and residents for COVID-19 and provide care to residents. By so doing, they can help keep these residents from needing to be hospitalized.

In Henderson County, NC, a rescue squad of volunteer paramedics set up tents where staff could take off their personal protective equipment. They taught staff important safety protocols. Residents’ families and staff received emotional support from chaplains and mental health therapists. And, someone with PR expertise was charged with helping family members understand the plight of residents in the facility.

The goal is to slow the spread of the virus through better coordination of care. A strike team response is often used when there is a hurricane or other natural disaster. The inability of many nursing homes to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus within their facilities is just that, a natural disaster. It’s far simpler to help people on site with a team that knows how to manage the emergency than to remove people from the site.

States, including Texas, Massachusetts and New Jersey, have taken on some emergency response work at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. A bi-partisan bill in Congress would appropriate money for these states to continue this work. Though, it’s not clear whether it will be enacted into law.

Now, more local agencies are taking emergency response measures to help the thousands of understaffed and under-resourced nursing homes and assisted living facilities in small communities across the country.

While there is no data yet available on the benefits of the strike team approach, experts say it makes sense and, anecdotally, people say it is working.

Here’s more from Just Care:
August 18, 2020
Can you protect nursing home residents in a profit-driven system?
A story in The Guardian about corporate entities that buy up nursing homes, with the goal of squeezing as much profit out of them as possible and no regard for their residents, speaks volumes about the horrific nature of our profit-driven health care system. Because nursing homes can operate as for-profit facilities–even when Medicare and Medicaid are paying their bills–many of them have become storage units for frail and vulnerable Americans rather than care centers.

Storage units? That might be too kind a description. Many nursing facilities have become places that do not provide staff to care properly for their frail and vulnerable residents. Instead, our taxpayer dollars flow to their owners, through Medicare and Medicaid, who buy and sell them like used cars, after pocketing as much money from them as possible. These nursing homes then engage a skeletal staff at a low wage to care for the residents. Here’s one example:

Multi-millionaire Joseph Schwartz owns Skyline Healthcare LLC, which receives millions of Medicare and Medicaid dollars to provide care to patients in its 100-plus nursing facilities. But, Schwartz abandons these facilities without bothering to let the staff or residents’ families know he’s sold off his properties.

Schwartz leaves staff unpaid, without benefits or recourse, and residents sitting in their feces, unfed, without electricity or care. He left one pharmacy without paying it the $200,000 it was owed for prescription drugs. And, since the novel coronavirus pandemic, police went to one Skyline facility and found 17 people dead and lying atop one another in a four-person morgue.

According to the Guardian, over the last 20 years or so, it has become extremely common for corporate entities to buy nursing facilities, realize as much profit as possible, and then sell them. Massive fraud is also common. Patient neglect is often the norm. And, eviction of residents is not uncommon. Sometimes, state governments come to the rescue, but not always.

For-profit nursing homes need to be better regulated. But, what would that mean? How would regulation protect against owners who have no interest in anything other than taking the Medicare and Medicaid revenue and running.

One man who owned many nursing homes in a number of states received a 20-year prison sentence for pocketing Medicare and Medicaid dollars to care for residents and never spending a dollar on their care. But, he was not stopped until after he had amassed $1.3 billion. It took authorities several years to stop him after his fraud was exposed by reporters at the Chicago Tribune. How many others like him are still pretending to operate nursing homes and simply pocketing the federal and state dollars intended to go to residents’ care?

Private equity firms are also buying up nursing homes, draining them of their value, and abandoning them. The Carlyle Group bought HCR ManorCare, a chain of nursing facilities. It sold off their real estate for $6.1 billion and then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy when the monthly rent cost too much.

In case this isn’t all bad enough, many states are providing nursing homes immunity from COVID-19 litigation. And, Senate Majority Leaders Mitch McConnell has said that any new stimulus bill must include provisions that would make it extremely hard for residents and staff to sue nursing home owners. Advocates have organized to urge state legislators to permit residents to sue these facilities and hold them to account for not providing appropriate care. Otherwise, nursing homes will continue with these bone-chilling practices.

Here’s more from Just Care:
August 4, 2020
Blame Donald Trump for the nursing home Covid-19 crisis
The very first COVID-19 outbreak in the US took place in a Kirkland, Washington nursing home more than four months ago, at the end of February. At least 37 people died. That first outbreak should have been the impetus for the Trump administration to launch a coordinated national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, centered around protecting nursing home residents and workers. Instead, they’ve focused on protecting nursing home corporations from lawsuits.

When the White House brings up the nursing home crisis at all, it’s to seek to shift the blame to Democratic governors. Trump is desperate to deflect from the truth: Over 54,000 nursing home residents and workers are dead. Those deaths were preventable. Their deaths are Donald Trump’s fault.

A new report from the Senate Aging Committee lays out the Trump administration failures that led to the nursing home crisis. Trump never had a plan to protect nursing home residents. In fact, the actions his administration did take put seniors and people with disabilities directly in the path of the deadly pandemic.

For months, as nursing home workers faced a devastating shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and tests, Trump refused to invoke the Defense Production Act. Nor did he leverage FEMA’s response capabilities to target supplies to nursing homes.

An opaque and corrupt program, run by the president’s inexperienced, unqualified son-in-law, tasked to deliver critically needed PPE not surprisingly failed miserably to help anybody, except perhaps Trump’s political donors. FEMA continues to deliver broken and unusable equipment to nursing homes even as the unrelenting death toll in nursing homes grows.

Simply telling nursing homes to test workers and residents more often, as the administration has done, is meaningless. What’s needed is an actual plan to procure additional tests and get them to the facilities that need them. This late in the pandemic, that plan is still missing.

In March and April, Congress allocated $175 billion in emergency funding for health care providers in the front lines of the pandemic. It was the Trump administration’s responsibility to distribute that funding as quickly and efficiently as possible. But it took two months for the administration to distribute any of the funding to nursing homes—and then only a paltry $19.5 billion.

Nursing home workers are at the front lines of the crisis. Across the country, nursing homes have seen staffing shortages, forcing them to hire part timers who work in multiple facilities. Employees who remain are often forced to work while experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, further spreading the disease. This is exacerbated by the fact that even before COVID-19, private equity barons had seized on the long term care industry as a sector they could hollow out, carve up and destroy for profit.

We need to increase staffing levels by providing premium hazard pay. We must guarantee paid sick leave for all nursing home workers. Workers who need to quarantine should be provided with temporary housing so they don’t infect their families. The Trump administration has proposed none of this, because their anti-worker ideology takes precedence over public health.

The right-wing deflection operation is well underway. The Trump White House and Senator Mitch McConnell understand that the nursing home crisis is political kryptonite. They don’t care about the lives lost; indeed, they never mention them. Instead, they care only about the bad headlines and the plummeting support among seniors for Trump and Republicans.

Starting with the official propaganda organ of the Trump White House, FOX News, and filtering down through shadowy networks of dark money used to spread unchecked lies on Facebook, their playbook is clear: Deflect responsibility, blame Democratic governors, and lie about the failures of the president and his administration.

Chief White House strategist and mouthpiece Sean Hannity can be seen in this clip laying out the whole strategy for “dealing with” the nursing home crisis. Hannity heaps praise on Florida Republican Governor DeSantis while blaming, among others, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her state’s nursing home crisis. He goes so far as to say that the media needs to apologize to Gov. DeSantis for criticizing his rush to “reopen” the state.

Like so much else Trump does, this strategy is based on a lie. Public health experts and local senior advocacy groups agree that Whitmer did a very effective job in a terrible situation, while Gov. DeSantis’s state of Florida is ineffectively confronting an explosion of new cases and dwindling hospital beds.

To end the nursing home crisis, we need a robust system of testing and tracking. We need a system in place to make sure that every facility has PPE, tests, and adequate staffing. We need measures in place to reduce the overall spread of COVID-19, including a national mandate to wear masks in public places. Most of all, we need an administration that values the lives of people over the profits of corporations.

Recently, one of Trump’s top economic advisors, Stephen Moore, suggested that we should allow every business (including high risk environments like bars and gyms) to reopen. He insisted this would be safe so long as we “keep older people in quarantine because they’re the ones susceptible from dying.” While Dan Patrick, Trump ally and Lt. Governor of Texas, another state with an exploding epidemic, said that seniors should sacrifice themselves to protect the economy.

It’s this cavalier attitude towards seniors’ lives that led to the nursing home crisis. Older people should not have to quarantine themselves forever, cut off from their families and friends, because the Trump administration is too incompetent to contain the pandemic. Nor would it even work for them to do so. Over 64 million Americans live in multi-generational households. And even if no nursing home patient ever left, or had visitors, workers still go in and out.

What Moore and Patrick are saying, and the philosophy behind Trump’s entire response to the pandemic, is that he thinks that seniors’ lives—as well as the lives of people with disabilities, people who are immunocompromised, and others who are at high risk from COVID-19— are disposable.

Trump’s failure to contain the nursing home crisis is a product of his values. He values nursing home corporations, which don’t want to get sued. He values Wall Street billionaires, who are demanding that every business reopen regardless of public health. He does not value seniors’ lives. He is more than happy to volunteer them to be sacrificed on the altar of Wall Street’s greed.

This is all Donald Trump’s fault. The blood is on his hands.

Here’s more from Just Care:
July 8, 2020
Coronavirus: Lawmakers ignore horrific number of nursing home deaths
David Dayen writes for The American Prospect on the horrific number of deaths at nursing homes during this novel coronavirus pandemic. At last count, more than 31,000 nursing home residents had died from COVID-19. What’s shocking is that lawmakers are turning a blind eye to the issue and protecting nursing home owners.

First, we have incomplete and inaccurate information about nursing home deaths. In fact, only four in five nursing homes have reported COVID-19 casualties to CMS. It’s unclear how many are misreporting their data.

At a minimum, one in four COVID-19 deaths are in nursing homes. To put that in context, nursing home residents represent fewer than one in 165 Americans. Dayen says that the number of nursing home deaths translate to between 12 and 18 deaths each hour.

This is criminal. Horrific. But, there is not the due uproar and focus on this scandal because it is largely hidden. We are not seeing the images to trigger the needed response. We only recently have seen data.

Meanwhile, states have imposed rules on nursing homes regarding testing of residents and staff to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. In some states, staff are expected to be tested twice a week. Some insurers are refusing to pay for these tests, which are related expressly to employment and not personal health. Nursing homes say they cannot afford to pay for them. Again, a guaranteed, universal health care system could easily address this issue.

On a separate note, lawmakers have given nursing home executives immunity from liability for failing to properly care for their residents. Nursing home regulations have been loosened. Fines for failing to abide by regulations have been lowered. Yet, many nursing homes have been cited for endangering their residents over the last decade, including improper care, abuse and theft of resources.

We have a terrible long-term care system in this country that is desperately in need of fixing. It’s long past time to start remedying this abhorrent situation.

Here’s more from Just Care:
June 9, 2020
Coronavirus: Should nursing homes be for-profit?
Matthew Goldstein et al. reports for The New York Times that most US nursing homes were losing money pre-pandemic. Not surprisingly, they were not well prepared for the novel coronavirus. The latest data indicates that one in three deaths from COVID-19 are nursing home residents or workers. Should nursing homes be for-profit?

Today, of the more than 15,000 nursing homes, about 70 percent are for-profit according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of nursing homes are part of chains owned by companies trying to get as much money out of them as possible. In the process, they leave little money for patient care. A Kaiser Family Foundation report on chain nursing homes leads you to want to stay clear of them.

Often chain nursing home owners also own the nursing home real estate, which can be worth more than the nursing home. When they separate the nursing homes from their real estate, the nursing homes have less value and must pay rent. The nursing homes have fewer assets and less money to deliver care. Liabilities for these nursing homes can be twice their assets.

Nursing home owners often also own other companies that are vendors for nursing homes. That way, the owners can generate revenue from the nursing homes for their other businesses. The owners might not leave the nursing homes with enough money to care for their residents properly. The for-profit nursing homes have also been found not to deliver as good quality care as non-profit nursing homes.

A NYU business school report looked at private equity buyouts of nursing homes over 17 years. The researchers found a 2.4 percent decrease in nursing staff time and a 3.6 decrease in quality of care. At one facility, a nursing assistant reported that there can be as few as one certified nursing assistant for every 19 residents.

When the coronavirus struck, the for-profit nursing homes tended to be understaffed. And they did not have adequate personal protective equipment. This is likely why there have been so many COVID-19 deaths in nursing facilities. Still, many states are giving nursing homes broad immunity from lawsuits during this pandemic.

If you’re looking to compare nursing homes, Medicare rates nursing homes on nursing home compare based on a five-star system. You should avoid one- and two-star nursing homes. But, you should not assume that four- and five-star nursing homes deliver good quality care. The rating system is a farce; there’s plenty of gaming. Check out the Informed Patient Institute for more information on nursing home ratings as well as information on Pro Publica.

And, if you or someone you love is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan and needs nursing home care, beware. People in Medicare Advantage plans are likely to end up in lower-quality nursing homes.

Click on this New York Times link to see the number of COVID-19 deaths at different nursing home facilities.

Here’s more from Just Care:
May 12, 2020
Here are ways Congress can ensure the well-being of older adults during the coronavirus pandemic
Congress has just passed an $8 billion emergency spending package to help address the coronavirus pandemic. The emergency spending package includes funding to develop a new coronavirus vaccine. It also includes funding to states and localities for emergency stockpiles to respond to people’s needs. In addition, the Trump administration has expanded telehealth services for people with Medicare and is giving the states permission to loosen Medicaid eligibility requirements. As Congress works on a large stimulus package, Senators Jack Reed, Bob Casey and many other lawmakers have set forth a list of additional actions the federal government should be taking to ensure the well-being of older adults. It is fully captured in this bill introduced by Senator Bob Casey.

Congress should provide funding to cover the cost of automatically enrolling low-income older adults and people with disabilities in programs that help cover the cost of their premiums, deductibles and coinsurance. Today these Medicare Savings Programs are underenrolled, in part because people are not aware they are eligible. Enrolling them automatically will ensure that financial barriers do not prevent them from getting treated for the coronavirus and other health care needs.

Congress should make it easier for older adults to get tested and treated for the coronavirus and obtain the medicines they need. People should not forego care because of cost. Deductibles and copays should be waived along with prior authorization requirements. People should also be able to get 90-day supplies of their medicines and telehealth services. Whether you are enrolled in traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage, you should have no out-of-pocket costs for testing. Medicare Advantage plans, including UnitedHealthcare, do not appear to be waiving out-of-pocket costs for treatment as of now.

Congress should increase funding to survey and inspect nursing homes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs money to inspect these facilities and ensure they have protocols both to prevent the coronavirus from spreading and to treat cases as they emerge. Right now, people in nursing homes are at particular risk of contracting the coronavirus because of lax infection control policies in many nursing homes.

Congress should provide states with additional Medicaid funds to help ensure low-income older adults have better access to home and community-based services. States could then hire more direct service providers and home health workers, pay them appropriately, and provide care to people currently on wait lists.

Congress should provide funding to Meals on Wheels and congregate meal programs to ensure older adults have healthy food to eat at home. Since older adults should be staying home as much as possible, they will not be as likely to be getting their meals at senior centers. Meals on Wheels also provides some companionship for older adults, an additional benefit that helps address social isolation.

Congress should increase funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program so that it can help more at-risk older adults.

Congress should provide funding to the National Family Caregiver Support Program so that it can help more caregivers. This program helps gives caregivers a break from their caregiving responsibilities.

Here’s more from Just Care:
March 18, 2020
Nine takeaways for the US from other health care systems
Dylan Scott at Vox traveled to Taiwan, Australia and the Netherlands to gain a better understanding of their health care systems and how they differ from ours. Here are his nine takeaways.

1. The US is the only developed country that is not committed to universal health care.

Unlike Taiwan, Australia, the Netherlands and the UK, policymakers in the US have not reached consensus that the federal government should guarantee everyone in the country access to health care, much less that health care should be affordable to all.

2. There’s no perfect universal health care system.

Every other developed country covers everyone, and their residents pay far less for their care than we do in the US. Still, some countries do not have enough health care providers and costs are rising.

Australia recently adopted a two-tiered system, offering everyone public health insurance and those who can afford it, private insurance. The government is investing a lot of money in the private system. As a result, there is less needed funding for the public system. Also, there are longer wait times for people in the public system.

Meanwhile, the Dutch system now relies on private insurers which has driven up health care spending. Administrative costs are higher, deductibles are now almost $500, and health care is less affordable for people.

3. Governments spend a lot to guarantee their citizens health care.

In other countries, governments negotiate health care prices, set rules for what is covered and when and how much people can be charged for copays. Private insurers are really claims processors, without the liberty to decide how care is covered, unlike in the US, where they must each negotiate their own rates and have tremendous freedom to restrict access to care and set copay amounts.

4. To ensure health care affordability, governments impose cost controls.

Some countries rely on global budgets–they set aside a fixed amount to pay for health care each year. The Australian government sets prices for doctors’ services. And, Australia has a system for evaluating whether a prescription drug offers value.

Moreover, governments tend to rely on national electronic health records databases to see what’s working and not. Governments determine what care is covered, at what price, and how much patients will pay for their care. Insurers operate more like claims processors. They cannot set their own rules.

5. Many countries are struggling to deliver and cover long-term care.

Long-term care costs for older adults and people with disabilities are growing. And, it’s not clear whether and how countries will deliver the care people need or help to cover the costs of long-term care.

The US government today spends far less on long-term care than every western European country except Portugal.

6. Private insurance is sometimes part of the health care system, but with lots of controls and challenges.

Scott sees private insurance as a political compromise in other countries, not a policy solution.

The insurance industry has a lot of financial and political power to sway policy in their favor. In Australia, private insurance gives people with means more health care choices, but it has hurt everyone else to some degree.

7. Physicians will never be completely happy with a universal health care system.

Curiously, in every country almost twice as many doctors or more are satisfied or very satisfied with their health care system than are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Only Germany has less doctor satisfaction (63 percent) than the US (65 percent) and more dissatisfaction (36 percent v. 34 percent). Norway had the highest doctor satisfaction (91 percent), with Australia close behind (88 percent).

8. Health insurance coverage is not the same as guaranteeing people the health care they need.

Health care delivery system reforms need to be part of the picture if you want everyone to have access to care. Coverage is not enough. For example, some underserved regions might need hospitals or specialists. Or, as in the Netherlands, doctors might be required to provide care during the evening and weekends and make home visits. To share the load, doctors formed cooperatives.

9. What works in the US might be different from what works in other countries.

The US effectively has more than 50 health care systems. It has one for people with Medicare, one for people with Medicaid, one for Vets, and one in each state. And, the US has substantial racial disparities in our health care system.

Health care in the US varies depending upon which system you are in, your race and your ability to pay. And, it is profoundly inequitable. So long as policymakers are beholden to the corporate health insurers, it’s not likely much will change.

Here’s more from Just Care:
February 19, 2020
The FAMILY Act would ensure paid leave to workers caring for older family members
Across the country, millions of working people must give up their jobs or take unpaid leave to be caregivers for older relatives, putting their financial well-being at risk. Advocates are now engaged in a campaign to urge Congress to create a comprehensive, national paid leave program through the Family And Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act. The Act would ensure that workers are not financially penalized for leaving work to care for themselves or family members with serious health conditions.

Around 40.4 million Americans serve as unpaid caregivers for older adults. More than six in ten of them are working people and nearly half of them work full-time. But, not even one in five working people (just 19 percent of workers) has paid family leave through their employers. As a result, when people need to stop working or to reduce their workload to care for an aging relative, they often face a significant loss of income.

The FAMILY Act would enable working people to take up to a total of 12 weeks each year (60 working days) to care for themselves or a family member with a serious health condition. And, they would still receive a portion of their wages. Workers could take the paid time away from work however they please, all at once or intermittently.

Workers could earn as much as two-thirds of their monthly wages up to a capped amount. And, the FAMILY Act would cover all workers, no matter the size of their employer. The Act covers full-time, part-time and self-employed workers.

The FAMILY Act would not require government funding. The Act would create an affordable and self-sustaining national family and medical leave insurance fund to cover all workers. Workers and their employers would pay .02 cents on every $10.00 earned, less than $2.00 a week (less than $100 a year) for most workers. All workers would be required to participate in the program.

Representative Rosa DeLAuro (D-CT) introduced the FAMILY Act, H.R. 1185 in the House and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the FAMILY Act, S. 463 in the Senate.

We need a groundswell of support for this Act. If you support the FAMILY Act, please sign this petition.

Here’s more from Just Care:
October 1, 2019
Support increases for Medicare for All the better it is understood
The latest Morning Consult + Politico national tracking poll shows that support increases for Medicare for All as it is better understood. Support rises once people understand that Medicare for All covers their care from the doctors they want to see.

Overall, more than half the public (53 percent) supports or strongly supports Medicare for All, whereas 36 percent oppose or strongly oppose it. Support falls to 46 percent if people are told Medicare for All reduces the role of private insurance. Yet, people may be confusing private insurance with care from private doctors and hospitals. Support increases to 55 percent when people are told that Medicare for All would allow them to continue to get care from their doctors and hospital while reducing the role of private insurance.

These poll results suggest that a large portion of the public still does not understand that Medicare for All gives them freedom to see the doctors they want to see anywhere in the US. They appear to mistakenly believe that if they lose their private insurance they lose access to their doctors. They also likely do not know or believe Medicare for all may generate savings of as much as $5 trillion over ten years and lower their health care costs.

The poll did not ask voters whether they would support Medicare for All if it eliminated premiums, deductibles and copays and added vision, hearing, dental and long-term care benefits. It’s reasonable to assume that were voters asked, support for Medicare for All would increase substantially.

Medicare for All is clearly not yet well understood by people with Medicare. Medicare for All would reduce their out-of-pocket health care costs and expand their benefits. Still, stunningly, only 40 percent of people over 65 support or strongly support Medicare for All, with 54 percent opposing or strongly opposing it. The percentage of supporters and strong supporters increases to 50 percent once people learn they would be able to continue to get care from their doctors and hospital.

Support for Medicare for All varies by party lines. More than three in four Democrats (78 percent), 56 percent of Independents, and 26 percent of Republicans support Medicare for All once they know it would allow them to continue to get care from their doctors and hospital.

The public option proposal–Medicare for some— enjoys 68 percent support or strong support, greater support than Medicare for All. It sounds good. But, most people likely do not understand that the public option cannot and does not guarantee them affordable health care coverage or provide them additional benefits. It does not lower provider rates for people with private insurance. It does not reduce administrative costs. And, it keeps premiums, deductibles and coinsurance high.

If you support Medicare for all, please let Congress know. Sign this petition.

Here’s more from Just Care:
July 9, 2019